ANDREW IRO OKUNGBOWA 
In an interview with E- Life, an online portal, monitored by ANDREW IRO OKUNGBOWA, Rev Ladi Thompson, of Living Waters Unlimited Church and strategic thinker, spoke on the spiritual dimension of COVID-19 pandemic, which according to him is from the kingdom of darkness allowed by God to expose the Church and draw its attention back to Him. Excerpts…
Many ministers of God have described COVID-19 as part of the manifestation of the end times; what is your position on this?
COVID-19 pandemic has got people panicked but when we look at the scriptures, Matthew 24: 6-8, you will hear of wars and rumours of war. But don’t be troubled because all these things must come to pass but the end is not yet. Yes, there has been a lot of scare mongering about COVID-9 but it does not yet fit into the end of the end times. We can say safely that we are still at the dawn or the beginning of the end times but we have not yet entered into the end of the end times. COVID-19 has got people scared across the world and many teachers are now teaching etascatology and some are talking about anti-Christ. This is just a dress rehearsal. When you want to look into the real thing you go to the book of Revelation 8: 1-9; I want to give you an idea of the kind of momentous things that will signify the end and the true end times. The bible says ‘when He opened the seven seals, there was silence in the heaven for 30 minutes and then seven angels stood before God, they had seven trumpets and one had a golden censer and he mixed it with the prayers of the saints and the smoke ascended to the presence of God. ‘Then as he took the censer through the fire in the altar, he cast it into the earth. He cast it into the earth and there were voices, thunder and lightning and earthquakes. And the seven angels said let’s get going and the first angel sounded, hail and fire mingled with blood cast upon the earth. ‘One third of all the trees everywhere burnt off and all the green grass burnt off. The second angel sounded and it was like a great mountain burning with fire but cast into the sea and third part of the sea became blood and third part of the creatures that are in the sea that had life had died and third part of the ship were destroyed.’ I want you to know that if one third of all the ships in the sea are destroyed that level of destruction is apocalyptic. So when you look at all these things that we are looking at with the COVID-19 statistics so far what you see here is just a dress rehearsal. The real thing has dimensions that are much more awesome. Remember that it was a third of stars and tail of a dragon removed from the heavens that was cast into the earth. So we are talking about one third of the oceans becoming blood. This is just a dress rehearsal.
Why then is the church not able to raise a counterforce against all these diseases, pandemics and epidemics that are ravaging the world?
It thus looked on the surface that this pandemic is winning and the forces of darkness seem to be gaining an upper hand. The word of God says that the people of God perish for lack of knowledge (Hosea 4: 6). The disadvantage that we have today is that we don’t understand the dynamics behind pandemics, sicknesses and diseases. Until a believer understands the revelation of three kingdoms, it is difficult for the kingdom of God to gain the upper hand. There are three kingdoms and everything that happens inside and outside existence can be traced to the three kingdoms. These kingdoms are the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Man and the Kingdom of Darkness. Every kingdom has a king and it is the nature of the king of that kingdom that describes his kingdom. All kingdoms are upheld by governments and when Isaiah said that the government shall be upon his shoulders, he was talking about Jesus Christ and he was just pointing out that the government of the Kingdom of God is headed by Jesus Christ. When it comes to the government of man, mankind himself has taken possession to lead the government of man devoid of devil and devoid of God. While in the Kingdom of Darkness, Satan is the king of that government. Every government is upheld by ministries and institutions. For the kingdom of man and the government of man, you have the ministry of aviation, ministry of health and many more. Now, coming to the pandemic, the ministry of death, the ministry of deception, the ministry of destruction, they all work under the government of darkness and these are what produce pandemics and epidemics.
Who are the beings that work in these ministries?
You have principalities; you have powers, rulers of darkness of this world and spiritual wickedness in the heavenliest and human beings who sell their souls to serve in Satan’s government of darkness. What you find interesting is that we have pointed out that sicknesses, pandemics and diseases come from the Kingdom of Darkness and the government of darkness and their institutes and ministries. Now under the kingdom of man you have the ministry of health and they are the ones right now looking for a vaccine because it is the duty of the government of man to resist what the Kingdom of Darkness has brought. But you see because they are bound by the terrestrial all their efforts are limited.
What role does the kingdom of God play in all of these?
The pandemic has come from the Kingdom of Darkness; medical healthcare is coming from the Kingdom of Man. Now from the Kingdom of God, from the government of Jesus Christ, from the ministry of divine health and healing, our own solution therefore is the activation of the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus so that we can impact the divine health and impact divine healing to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. That actually is the ideal.
Then why is this divine health and healing not playing out today?
The challenge we have today is that the kingdom of God is not moving fast because there is a model in modern Christianity. In the book of Ephesians the bible says to some he gave Apostles, Prophets, Teachers, Evangelists and Pastors for the perfection of the saints who should now do the work of the ministry So you find that there are many vacancies in the government of Jesus Christ. The ministries of divine health and divine healing for instance, there are a lot of vacancies, and nobody is working there. Most of the people who are posted there by the Holy Spirit, by Jesus Christ have relocated themselves to the ministry of prosperity, to the ministry of motivational speaking and some other more popular ministries. People forget that there was a time that even medical healthcare was primitive. The medical doctors were not getting much results but the Kingdom of Man invested in the government of man the government of man invested in the ministry of medical healthcare and things like that to bring the advancement that you are seeing today. But the ministry of divine health and divine healing is still in primitive stage because all the workers who are meant to be working in it have decamped and some of the staff who are supposed to teach and produce those who will work in the ministry have taken over the work of the ministry themselves. So, it looks as if darkness is moving forward, man is moving forward but the church is investing in man’s ministries thinking that that is what God wants. So if a church establishes a hospital, what it has done is good but it comes from the tree of good and evil. Does it please God? No. What pleases God is when the church puts the Kingdom of God first; he puts the government of God first and invests in divine health and divine healing.
Has the church learnt any lesson from COVID-19 at all?
I must confess that the post COVID- 19 messages of the church will change but what is the take home and what has the church learnt from all of these things that have happened to all of us? One of the things is this, we must all realise that a gospel that can’t handle COVID-19 is not the gospel that you must rely on to get you into the kingdom of heaven. The failure of the modern and old gospel to handle COVID-19 is a pointer to the fact that what we have been preaching and what has been prevalent all over the world is not the same gospel as the one Jesus Christ preached. If you go to the book of Jude, the bible instructs that we must contend for the original gospel, for the original faith that was delivered to the Saints. Deceptions are terrible and there are a lot of deceptions within the modern gospel and I am talking about 90%; all over the place and there is a need for us to examine ourselves as the bible says whether we are still in the faith. Once we restore normalcy to the church we need to put spiritual education, give it a priority in the curriculum because we have failed as a modern church. A lot of what the modern church is doing is that we are trying to use the intellect, the brain of man to drive a kingdom that is spiritual and it is never, never going to work. We must learn to activate the mind of Christ and it is the only mindset that can handle the things of the kingdom of God. We will now be able to activate the law of the spirit of life in Christ when we have taken sound spiritual education, we have activated the mind of Christ and have enabled the mystery of the kingdom and then it will be easy for us to do things in the same way it is done in the kingdom of God.
